Rumor: AMD is up for sale, Dell may be interested

As far as the stock market is concerned, Advanced Micro Devices may be up for sale. AMD's shares were significantly up yesterday, apparently on rumors that Dell is interested in buying the American multinational semiconductor company. Barron's reported on the rumor first:

I would say the recent departures of senior executives — COO Robert Rivet last week, CEO Dirk Meyer back in January — is still unexplained and can lead to all kinds of speculation. There's not a lot of color on the rumor at this point. Is Dell considering making a more integrated kind of product line? Talk about a change in strategy.

CFO Thomas Seifert is acting as interim CEO but he has said that he doesn't want the promotion to be permanent. Bloomberg followed up on the rumor with quotes from an industry analyst:

"There is no management team there," said Patrick Wang, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in New York. There is some "chatter" that the company is up for sale, he said. "It's a far- fetched possibility."

If AMD ends up being bought out, the purchase by Dell, or any other company for that matter, would be among the biggest the technology industry has seen. It would be of course bigger than when AMD bought ATI in 2006.